My aim is to offer insights into some of the more subtle principles underpinning prints. The commentary is based on thirty-eight years of teaching and the prints and other collectables that I am focusing on are those which I have acquired over the years.
In the galleries of prints (accessed by clicking the links immediately below) I am also adding fresh images offered for sale. If you get lost in the maze of links, simply click the "home" button to return to the blog discussions.

Gallery of prints for sale

Friday, 27 October 2017

Gabriel Smith’s crayon-manner engraving, “Study of Three Hands”, 1765

Gabriel
Smith (1724–c1783)

“Study of Three Hands”, 1765, Plate 18 from the sixty engraved
plates in "The School of Art" published in London in 1765 by Carington
Bowles (1724–1793), John Bowles (1701?–1779) and Robert Sayer (1725–1794).

Crayon-manner with engraving and etching, printed in brown ink on
laid paper with margins as published.

Condition: richly inked and well-printed impression in
marvellously preserved condition (i.e. there are light signs of handling in terms
of a few surface marks, otherwise the sheet is free of tears, holes, folds,
abrasions, stains or foxing). There are pencil notations from previous
collectors (verso).

I am selling this large sheet of studies of hands designed for
advanced art students in the late 1700s to copy for a total cost of AU$118
(currently US$90.19/EUR77.65/GBP68.86 at the time of this listing) including
postage and handling to anywhere in the world.

If you are interested in purchasing this sheet of stunningly
beautiful studies, please contact me (oz_jim@printsandprinciples.com) and I
will send you a PayPal invoice to make the payment easy.

This page of exquisite studies of hands is from a book of engravings
(published in 1765) that were executed in the crayon manner (i.e. using a roulette
tool that creates dotted strokes mimicking chalk lines) designed for close
examination and copying by art students.

Although the short version of the title of the book is simply “The
School of Art” the alternative title featured on the British Museum’s copy (see
BM no 165.b.7) is much more revealing regarding the publishers’ envisaged scope
of the book:

“most compleat [sic] / drawing-book / extant: / consisting of an
extensive series of well chosen examples, / selected from the designs of those
eminent masters / Watteau, Boucher, Bouchardon, Le Brun, Eisen, &c. &c.
/ engraved on sixty folio copper plates, / and performed in a method which expresses
the manner of handling the chalk, and / the management and harmony of its tints
in real drawings.”

The table of contents is also revealing in that according to the
curator of the BM: “there is a sub-series titled: ‘12 heads, selected from
Monsr Le Brun's passion of ye soul’" (1891,0511.316.25-36).

Regarding this page of studies, I had a fruitful chat this morning
with my live-in polymath who argued with my view that studies of women’s hands
should reflect the fact ladies ALWAYS examine their fingernails by holding the
palm of their hand away from them (i.e. they look at their hands from the "back").
By contrast, manly men look at their fingernails by turning the palm of their
hand towards them and curling the hand. I went on to point out that this
difference also affected the way that women and men light matches: women strike
a match away from them whereas manly blokes strike a match towards them. I am
sometimes wrong of course … and when my polymath produced a box of matches so
that I could demonstrate the manly man approach I have to admit that I had a
slight fear of setting myself on fire.